Friday, June 30, 2017

Yesterday, on the feast of Ss Peter and Paul, the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Eparchy of Chicago celebrated the enthronement of its new Eparch, Bishop Venedykt Aleksiychuk, who has hitherto served as an Auxiliary of Lviv in Ukraine since 2010. The ceremony, which took place at the Cathedral of St Nicholas, was presided over by the head of the UGCC, Sviatoslav Shevchuk, Major Archbishop of Kyiv-Halych. The Ukrainian Catholic Church’s television channel Живе Телебачення live-streamed the Divine Liturgy, and has now posted it on its Youtube channel; the ceremony starts around the 9:30 mark. It is, as one might well imagine, fairly lengthy, but like all such ceremonies in the Byzantine Rite, incredibly beautiful and majestic.

We wish every blessing upon Bishop Venedykt in his new ministry, and upon the people he will serve in the Eparchy of Chicago - Многая Літа!!

The joint commemoration of the Apostles Peter and Paul is one of the most ancient customs of the Roman Church, attested already in the oldest surviving Roman liturgical calendar, the Depositio Martyrum, written in 336 A.D. A verse of the hymn Apostolorum passio, agreed by most authorities to be an authentic work of St Ambrose († 397), and still used in the Ambrosian liturgy, says that “the thick crowds make their way through the circuit of so great a city; the feast of the sacred martyrs is celebrated on three streets.” These “three streets” are the via Cornelia, the main street running up to and over the Vatican hill; the via Ostiensis, where the burial and church of St Paul are; and the via Appia, on which sits the cemetery “in Catacumbas”.

This last is the ancient Christian cemetery now called the Catacomb of St Sebastian; the word “catacomb” was in fact originally the name of the site of this cemetery specifically, and only later came to be used as a generic term for ancient subterranean Christian burial grounds. The basilica over the cemetery, now also entitled to St Sebastian, was originally known as the “Basilica Apostolorum”, in memory of a tradition that the bones of Peter and Paul were kept there for a time, probably to save them from destruction in the era of persecutions. This is referred to in various ancient sources, including the Depositio Martyrum, and confirmed by modern archeological research. The celebration of the feast “on three streets” would refer then to a procession to visit the site of St Peter’s burial at the Vatican, that of St Paul on the via Ostiensis, and the cemetery where their remains were once kept.

The building of which this wall is a part was constructed over the Catacomb of St Sebastian about 250 A.D., and is covered with dozens of devotional graffiti like the one seen here. “Paule ed (et) Petre, petite pro Victore - Paul and Peter, pray (lit. ‘ask’) for Victor.”

The poet Prudentius, writing in the very early fifth century, calls the day “bifestum – a double feast”, and attests that on that day the Pope would say a Mass at the Basilica of St Peter, and then hasten to say another at St Paul’s. He does not refer to a visit to the Catacombs on the via Appia, but assuming this visit was made on the way back to the Papal residence at the Lateran, the total circuit is nearly nine-and-half miles, to be made at the height of the Italian summer. However, only seven years after Prudentius visited Rome in 403, the city was sacked by the Goths, then sacked again by the Vandals in 455; over the sixth and seventh centuries, it was largely reduced to ruins and depopulated by the long wars between the Goths and Byzantines, and the invasion of the Lombards.

It should not be surprising, then, that at a certain point the double feast was divided, and kept in a more manageable way as two separate feasts. In the Gelasian Sacramentary, we find three Masses of Ss Peter and Paul assigned to June 29th; the oldest copy of the Gelasianum dates to roughly 750, but much of the material is considerably older, some of it reaching back even to the days of St Leo the Great 300 years earlier. In some manuscripts, however, one of the three, “the proper Mass of St Paul”, has already been assigned to June 30th. In the Gregorian Sacramentary, written roughly a century later, we find the feast of St Peter on June 29th, and that of St Paul on the 30th; each Mass contains references to the other Apostle, but they are nevertheless clearly distinct. Thus, by the time of Charlemagne, the “bifestum” of Prudentius had already been separated into a two day feast.

At the traditional Mass of June 29th, the majority of the texts refer either to St Peter alone (Introit, Epistle, Alleluia, Gospel, Communion) or to Apostles generically, as in the Gradual “Thou shalt make them princes over all the earth.” The sole reference to St Paul is in the Collect, “O God, who hast consecrated this day by the martyrdom of Thy Apostles Peter and Paul, grant Thy Church to follow in all things the teaching of those through whom she first received the faith.” The Office is likewise dedicated almost entirely to St Peter, the notable exceptions being the hymns of Vespers and Lauds, and the antiphon of the Magnificat at Second Vespers. This latter is in both the structure of its text and in its Gregorian melody very similar to the Magnificat antiphon at Second Vespers of Pentecost, to indicate that the mission of the Holy Spirit is fulfilled in the lives and deaths of the Apostles, and thereafter in their successors.

On this day, Simon Peter ascended the gibbet of the cross, alleluia: on this day, he that beareth the keys of the kingdom of heaven passed rejoicing to Christ: on this day, Paul the Apostle, the light of the world, inclining his head, for the name of Christ was crowned with martyrdom, alleluia.

The following day, therefore, the whole of the liturgy is dedicated to St Paul, and is not called a day within the octave of the Apostles, but rather “the Commemoration of St Paul.” The variable texts of the Mass all refer to him, but a commemoration of St Peter is added to the feast, in accordance with the tradition that the two are never entirely separated in the veneration paid them by the Church. (The same is done on the feast of St Paul’s Conversion, and commemorations of him are added to the feasts of St Peter’s Chairs and Chains.) The Office is likewise dedicated entirely to him; both the Mass and Office, however, make use of St Paul’s own testimony in Galatians 2 to the mission of the two Apostles: “For he who worked in Peter for the apostleship of the circumcision, worked in me also among the gentiles; and they knew the grace of God that was given to me.” In the 1130s, a canon of St Peter’s Basilica named Benedict writes that it was still the custom in his time for the Pope to keep the feast of St Peter at the Vatican, but then celebrate Vespers at the tomb of St Paul in the great Basilica on the Ostian Way, “with all the choirs” of the city.

The apsidal mosaic of the St Paul’s Outside-the-Walls, executed in the 1220s, and heavily repaired after most of the ancient church was destroyed by fire in 1823. To the left of Christ are St Luke and St Paul, on the right St Peter and his brother St Andrew.

Originally, the Gospel for the feast was St Matthew 19, 27-29, and from this passage are taken the antiphon of the Benedictus and the Communion of the Mass. This same Gospel is used on several other feasts of Apostles, including the days within the octave of Ss Peter and Paul, and the feast of St Paul’s Conversion. It was changed in the Tridentine liturgical reform to St Matthew 10, 16-22, evidently because of the words “you shall be brought before governors, and before kings for my sake, for a testimony to them and to the gentiles,” an eminently appropriate choice for this feast. It also used on the feast of St Barnabas, who, after Paul’s conversion, when the members of the Church feared that it was perhaps a ruse to further the persecution, “took him, and brought him to the Apostles, and told them how he had seen the Lord, and that he had spoken to him.” (Acts 9, 27) The Epistle of the Mass, Galatians 1, 11-20, has been added to the traditional readings for the vigil of Ss Peter and Paul as the Epistle of the vigil Mass in the new rite.

In the Novus Ordo, the Commemoration of St Paul has been abolished, and the texts of both Mass and Office for June 29th rewritten to give equal space to both Apostles. So for example, of the two responsories in the Office of Readings, the first refers to Peter, and the second to Paul. (Inexplicably and unjustifiably, the Magnificat antiphon “Hodie” cited above was not retained in the Liturgy of the Hours.) June 30th is now the feast of the “Protomartyrs of the Roman Church”, the Christians whose martyrdom at the hands of the Emperor Nero is described in a famous passage of the Annals of Tacitus.

But all human efforts … did not banish the sinister belief that the conflagration (which destroyed much of Rome in July of 64 A.D.) was the result of an order. Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.

Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft on a car. Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man’s cruelty, that they were being destroyed. (Book XV, chapter 44)

The Torches of Nero, by Henryk Siemiradzki, 1876

Despite the early and explicit attestation of this martyrdom by an historian with no bias in favor of the Christians, there is no historical tradition of devotion to this group of martyrs “whose number and names are known only to God”, as we read in Donald Attwater’s revision of Butler’s Lives of the Saints. A notice of them was added to the Roman Martyrology in the post-Tridentine revision of Cardinal Baronius, but their feast was not added to the calendar of the diocese of Rome until the early 20th century, by Pope Benedict XV.

The “circus” to which Tacitus refers as the site of the martyrdom was a chariot racing facility that sat immediately to the south of the via Cornelia, next to where St Peter’s Basilica is today. It was allowed to fall to ruins after the death of Nero, and apparently razed to the ground by Constantine to make space for the original basilica. Left in place, however, was the Egyptian obelisk brought to Rome by Caligula, and set up on the “spine” of the circus, as the Romans called it, the wall down the middle around which the chariots raced. The turning posts on the end are called “metae” in Latin, and the apocryphal Acts of Peter, a work of the mid-2nd century, say that Peter was crucified “inter metas”; the obelisk, then, would have been among the last things St Peter saw in this world. After sitting next to the old Basilica for over 12 centuries, it was moved in 1586 to the area in front of the new church, then still under construction, later to be surrounded by Bernini’s Piazza. Its former location is marked by a plaque in the ground to the side of the modern basilica; the surrounding area was renamed by Benedict XV “Piazza of the First Martyrs of Rome.”

The Basilica of St Peter in 1450, according to the reconstruction of H.W. Brewer, 1891. The obelisk is seen immediately in front of the first rotunda on the left side of the basilica.

Thursday, June 29, 2017

Our thanks to Mr Teddy Thongratnachat, one of our regular photopost contributors, for sending these photographs and the description of the ceremonies recently held at the Pontifical Shrine of Our Lady of Mt Carmel in New York City, as a part of a prayer vigil for Nascent Life.

On Friday, June 23, the second All-Night Vigil for Nascent Life was observed at the Pontifical Shrine and Parish Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Manhattan. The liturgical rites began with the Stations of the Cross at 7 pm, followed by Solemn High Mass for the feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. Immediately after Mass, the Blessed Sacrament was exposed on the throne above the tabernacle, and the clergy and congregation recited the Act of Reparation and Consecration to the Sacred Heart; the Litany of the Sacred Heart was chanted in Latin. After a small break, Second Vespers for the Sacred Heart and Compline were celebrated coram Sanctissimo.

At 4 am on Saturday, June 24, a small bonfire was blessed according to the rite given in the Rituale Romanum, in front of the shrine’s entrance on 116th St. The blessing was originally planned for 4:30, but an impeding thunderstorm forced it to be done earlier; fortunately, the skies were clear for most to gather outside, while a few members of the congregation remained inside the Church before the Blessed Sacrament. After the blessing, the faithful lit their candles while the hymn Ut queant laxis was sung.

Truly it is fitting and just, right and profitable to salvation to give Thee thanks always, here and everywhere, in honor of the Apostles Peter and Paul. Whom Thy election did so deign to consecrate, that it might change blessed Peter’s worldly trade as a fisherman into divine teaching; so that he might deliver the human race from the depths of hell with the nets of Thy precepts. And then Thou didst change the mind of his fellow Apostle Paul, along with his name; and whom the Church at first feared as a persecutor, She now rejoices to hold as the teacher of divine commandments. Paul was blinded that he might see; Peter denied, that he might believe. To the one Thou gave the keys of the kingdom of heaven, to the other, knowledge of the divine law, that he might call the nations; for the latter brought them in, as the other opened (the door of heaven). Therefore both received the rewards of eternal virtue. Thy right hand did raise up the one, lest he sink as he walked upon the water, and rescued the other from the dangers of the deep when he was shipwrecked for the third time.

The Stefaneschi Triptych, painted by Giotto and assistants for the high altar of St Peter’s Basilica, ca. 1330. On the left, the Crucifixion of St Peter; in the middle, Card. Giacomo Stefaneschi kneels before Christ in majesty; on the right, the beheading of St Paul. In the upper part of the right panel, Angels bring St Paul’s blindfold to one of the women of the Roman church after his death, as Paul promised her would happen. (Public domain image from Wikipedia; click to enlarge.)

The one did conquer the gates of the hell, and the other the sting of death; and Paul was beheaded, for he was shown to be the head of the Gentiles’ faith, while Peter, followed in the footsteps of Christ, the head of us all. Whom together with Thee, almighty Father, and the Holy Spirit, the Angels praise, the Archangels venerate, the Thrones, Dominations, Virtues, Principalities and Powers adore; whom the Cherubim and Seraphim with shared rejoicing praise. And we pray that Thou may command our voices to be brought in among them, saying with humble confession: Holy, Holy, Holy… (The Preface of Ss Peter and Paul in the Ambrosian Missal.)

Wednesday, June 28, 2017

I strongly commend to our readers’ attention this excellent talk delivered to the recent Colloquium of the Church Music Association of America by Dom Benedict Maria Andersen OSB, a monk of Silverstream Priory in Ireland. It is entitled “Fulfilled is all that David told”: Recovering the Christian Psalter; by “Christian”, Dom Andersen here means the Psalms according to the Septuagint translation, which was used in the New Testament itself, and received by the Church from the very beginning for liturgical use. He offers a particularly interesting discussion of the importance of certain readings of the Septuagint for Christian theology and liturgy, also noting how the modern presumption in favor of the later Hebrew Massoretic text has led to a significant (and largely unjustified) break with tradition in the recasting of many liturgical texts for use in the Ordinary Form.

On Sunday, July 2nd at 5:00 p.m., on the external solemnity of the titular feast day of the Church of the Most Precious Blood in New York City, the Sacred Constantinian Military Order of St George will sponsoring a Solemn High Mass in the traditional rite, accompanied by the Mass for Three Voices of the 17th-century Neapolitan composer Francesco Durante. The church is located at 113 Baxter Street in Manhattan’s Little Italy neighborhood.

Tuesday, June 27, 2017

As we have for a few years running, we got up to three photoposts for Corpus Christi this year. It is certainly encouraging sign that each of them has included Masses celebrated in the proper Use of a religious order: Premonstratensians in the first, Dominicans in the second and third, although the Dominican Mass in this post was celebrated on the feast of the Sacred Heart. I also include a Mass for the feast of St John the Baptist, the first solemn EF celebrated in the cathedral of St Andrew in Victoria, British Columbia, since the liturgical reform. As always, we are very grateful to all those who sent these in. Continue the work of evangelizing through beauty!

As follow up to last week’s post on St Thomas and the virtue of religion, here is a description of a talk I heard recently on the film The Book of Eli. This is a film about faith which in some ways frustrated me because it wasn’t more Catholic. If the screenplay writer had known about Thomas Aquinas and the virtue of religion, it might have made it even better! I won’t give a detailed review - I don’t want to spoil it for those who haven’t seen it - but I will try to give you just enough to see how I thought a reading of St Thomas might have added to it.

The film, starring Denzel Washington, is set in a post-apocalyptic time in which there is no Church, and he is the only man who has access to Revelation in the form of a single Bible. All bibles, except the one owned by Eli, have been destroyed. We see no other aspect of Tradition surviving.

Eli reads Scripture daily and absorbs what he reads, so that he becomes a man of faith who attempts to lead a virtuous life and prays daily to his Creator. In time, his faith is passed on to others, not by the words in the book or by his preaching, but by the example of his life. For example, he makes a sacrifice of love, and it is through this action that the one whom he saved becomes a believer too.

It is a fascinating idea, stylishly told, but I would have loved to have seen the Church re-emerging as he reflects on his faith, and with it, a ritual of worship. This would have been natural to him.

As interesting as the film itself is the story of its making. The screenplay is by an Englishman called Gary Whitta who says he is an atheist. Nevertheless this a film about faith, and Whitta clearly knows his Bible. It was a big budget movie, just under $90 million. During the making of the film, the directors tried, from time to time, to play down the scriptural content, but Denzel Washington, whose father was a pastor and who is himself a Christian, insisted on keeping the Biblical content in the dialogue.

When Warner Brothers saw the completed movie, they didn’t know what to do with it, and, feeling uncomfortable with the Scriptural element, didn’t put a lot of effort into publicity when it was released. It was presented as a futuristic and post-apocalyptic movie, marketed to the same people as might watch the Mad Max series. It didn’t succeed with this market, but began to gain ground in the “red states” in the US. Believing Christians, and especially Protestants, started to watch it, and eventually it made a clear profit with box-office takings of about $157 million.

The story of the making of the film says to me that well-made films with intelligently incorporated themes of faith will succeed at the box office. What dismays me, however, is that it didn’t have a stronger Catholic theme, as distinct from a broadly Christian theme. There is no direct reference to the Church, but one might, perhaps equate the villainous intentions of Carnegie, Gary Oldman’s character, with an erroneous Protestant view of the Roman church as an organ of state control, and one that moved away from the Church that Christ established.

A more Catholic version of this film, would perhaps see the persistence of the Church in such a way that the Apostolic succession would be unbroken. Through this, as the Faith spread, so would the desire to worship God, the natural inclination of any man who has faith.

This is where the ideas of St Thomas might come into the picture. St Thomas describes what he calls the “virtue of religion,” mankind’s natural propensity, when he reflects upon his faith, to worship God.

The assumption here is that the event which these people survived, though widespread and destructive to civilization, and in this sense “apocalyptic”, was not the final end. It was not the Apocalypse of the described in the last book of the Bible. If it had been, then of course redemption would have taken place in the Second Coming of Christ, and this would be a film about the bodily resurrection of all Christians.

Monday, June 26, 2017

I am happy to publish today a delightful table, with introduction, that was submitted to NLM by Isaac Olson, “a young Catholic, professional classical musician, and devotee of hagiography.” Mr. Olson’s goal was to compile a list of saints who were musicians in one sense or another. He writes that this list is not necessarily complete: there are, for instance, a Bl. Paula (buried in San Carlo ai Catinari in Rome) who played violin, and Marie-Anqelique of Jesus, OCD (Pontoise, France), who played the piano and violin and was a cousin of Mendelssohn by her grandmother. It may be that readers would like to add any names that are missing from the table. Thank you, Mr. Olson, for sharing this with NLM.

Musicians, Singers, and Composers Among the Saints

by Isaac Olson

Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) noted that “it belongs to the essence of human beings that they come from God’s ‘art,’ that they themselves are a part of God’s art and as perceivers can think and view God’s creative ideas with him and translate them into the visible and the audible.”

From the rich, Catholic theological understanding of God and art has grown a keen interest in the interrelatedness of my own line of work - as a classical and studio musician - and the work of God - holiness. Hence, I have recently compiled an initial list of Saints, Blesseds, Venerables, and Servants of God who were musically gifted. This includes instrumentalists, singers, composers, hymnographers, music teachers, choir directors, and more.

The topics of saints and music are mutually complementary, in that they each reveal “the beauty that is already waiting and concealed in creation”. I treasure how the form of created beauty takes its shape or matter in the lives of those who correspond to God’s diffusive love through their gifts to our rich heritage of music. Would that all musicians might join their intentions with that of the musical Servant of God, Rosa Giovannetti, who responded to the applause of men with the heartfelt cry, “It is all for Jesus! The cello, the concerts? I use this gift for You only, to sing your praises and to praise You. Not to me the honors, but to You, the author of all grace.”

Note on the chart below: the term “musician” is applied as a general term to those saints whose specific musical accomplishments are unknown at this time of research. The term “composer”, as a general term, encompasses the classification of hymn-writers.

Sunday, June 25, 2017

On Thursday, June 29, the Solemnity of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Fr. Gabriel Mosher, O.P., will celebrate a Solemn High Mass in the Dominican Rite, assisted by Frs. Augustine Thompson, O.P. and Vincent Kelber, O.P., as deacon and subdeacon, at the Priory Parish of the Holy Rosary in Portland Oregon, starting at 7 p.m.

The music will be provided by Cantores in Ecclesiaunder the direction of Blake Applegate. The music for that Mass will be Palestrina’s Missa “Tu Es Petrus,” with proper chants from the Dominican Gradual. Cantores will also be singing at the usual 11 a.m. Dominican Rite Missa Cantata the following Sunday. Holy Rosary is located at 375 NE Clackamas St, Portland, OR 97232, and there is ample parking.

The final Mass of the CMAA Colloquium took place yesterday at St Mark’s Church, St Paul Minnesota. Solemn Mass for the Feast of the Nativity of St John the Baptist was celebrated by the CMAA Chaplain, Fr Robert Pasley. Amongst the choir directors pictured are Jonathan Ryan, Mary Ann Carr Wilson, Jeffrey Morse, Wilko Brouwers, David Hughes and Melanie Malinka.

Friday, June 23, 2017

Our first Corpus Christi photopost of this year included photos of a Mass in the Premonstratensian Rite, so our second starts with the Dominican Rite, and continues with a nice selection of churches from around the world, including a few contributers. A third photopost will appear in the next few days. As always, our thanks to all those who sent these in, participating in the work of evangelizing through beauty!

Yesterday evening at the CMAA Colloquium, First Vespers of the Sacred Heart was sung at the St Thomas University Chapel in the Extraordinary Form. The choir, directed by Jonathan Ryan, sang a 17th century setting of the Magnificat attributed to Buxtehude, accompanied by strings. The celebrant was Fr Robert Pasley, chaplain to the CMAA.

St. Colman’s Society for Catholic Liturgy is pleased to announce that the Fota X International Liturgy Conference, to be held in Cork, Ireland, July 8-10, will be opened by His Eminence Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke, Patron of the Sovereign Military and Hospitaler Order of St John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta. The subject of the conference is Resourcing the Prayers of the Roman Liturgy: Patristic Sources. His Eminence will deliver a paper entitled Early Sources of the Church’s Liturgical Discipline.

Card. Burke celebrating Pontifical Mass at Fota IX

The other speakers at the conference are:

Dieter Böhler SJ : Jerome and the Recent Revision of the German Einheitsübersetzung Bible.Joseph Briody : As He Promised: Davidic Hope Resurgent - the Message of 2 Kings 25:27-30.Markus Büning : Panis animarum – The Eucharist in St. Bernard of Clairvaux.Sven Conrad : The Christian Sacrifice according to St. Augustine: Prospectives taking into Consideration Joseph Ratzinger`s Approach.Gregory DiPippo : The Patristic Sources of the Roman Lectionary in Lent.Manfred Hauke : The Holy Eucharist in the Life and Work of Pope Gregory the Great.João Paulo de Mendonça Dantas : The Eucharist in the thought of Nicholas CabasilasJohannes Nebel : The Paradigmatic Change of the Post Conciliar Liturgical Reform from actio to celebratio in the Light of the Latin Fathers.
Mark Withoos: “ad audiendum silentium narrationis eius” (Ep. 147): Silence and Liturgy in St. Augustine.Kevin Zilverberg : The Latin Fathers-’ Daniel in Antiphons and Responsories.

The Lassus Scholars under the direction of Dr. Ite O’Donovan will provide the sacred music for the ceremonies to be held at Ss Peter and Paul’s Church in Cork City. The schedule is as follows:

Holy Name of Jesus Church in Brooklyn, New York, will celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus this evening at 7:00pm. For those new to or curious about the Latin Mass, there will be a fully instructional program with cues and translations. The church is located at 245 Prospect Park West.

Here is a note from the choir director about the music featured in this Mass: Six singers, the best of the best that New York City offers, will sing chant and polyphony as the Church has so gloriously done in the past for the feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. The Mass setting is by David Adam Smith, as well as the offertory motet. At communion the hymn Cor dulce in three voices will be sung, as well as appointed palms.

It has been several months since our last quiz, so as a reminder of our regular procedure: Please give your answer in the combox, along with any and all details you think pertinent to it. To keep it more interesting, please leave your answer before reading the other comments. We are always pleased to hear humorous answers as well. This photograph was taken by Fr Lawrence Lew; you can click it to see it in high resolution.

The Answer: This was obviously too easy; it is indeed St Aloysius Gonzaga receiving his First Communion from St Charles Borromeo. The window was made in the middle of the 19th century for the Lady Chapel of the cathedral of Lille, France. Stylistically, it is a very good copy of the medieval style, especially in the faces of St Aloysius’ parents. Judith Whitehouse correctly noted that the range of color is too great for medieval work, and Marko Ivančičević correctly noted that a medieval image of this would not have the tabernacle on the altar.

I must admit I thought people would be thrown off by the fact that St Charles as shown here looks much more like the Curé d’Ars than himself.

Mag. Theol., you take the prize for Best Humorous Answer for “St Karl Rahner receiving communion from St Annibale Bugnini”, but it should really be the other way around, since Bugnini was 8 years younger.

Thursday, June 22, 2017

Many of our readers have probably already seen that two members of the Fraternity of St Peter, Alex Stewart and Krzysztof Sanetra, were ordained to the priesthood at St Mary’s Shrine Church, Warrington, the first traditional ordination rite celebrated in England in decades. The FSSP’s LiveMass channel has now made available a video of the entire ceremony, just a little bit shy of three-and-a-half hours long. The FSSP England Facebook page has also posted a link to an enormous flickr album with pictures of the ceremony. Our congratulations to the newly ordained fathers, to their families and friends, and to the entire order. Ad multos annos!

When St. Thomas Aquinas composed the office of Corpus Christi, he wrote not only the musical texts such as the antiphons and hymns, but also the sermon to be read in the first and second nocturns of Matins, according to the custom of his times. (Very few feasts had Scriptural readings in the first nocturn in the Middle Ages.) This sermon, Immensa divinae largitatis beneficia, is found in almost all pre-Tridentine breviaries. However, it is not long enough to provide readings for Matins on each day of the octave; other readings had therefore to be selected for the remaining days. The homily of the third nocturn is taken from St Augustine’s Treatises on the Gospel of John, commenting on the Gospel of the feast, John 6, 56-59.

St. Thomas Aquinas in glory among the Doctors of the Church, by Francisco de Zurbarán, 1631.

In the 1529 Roman Breviary, the readings of the first and second nocturn on Friday, Saturday and Sunday are taken from the famous Decree of the 12th-century canonist Gratian, which was, broadly speaking, the medieval code of Canon Law. The third part, called On Consecration, is a long florilegium of texts from the Church Fathers and various other sources, and is quite suitable for spiritual reading, despite being essentially a law textbook. These readings include a fairly lengthy excerpt from St Ambrose’s book On the Mysteries, another from the treatise On the Sacraments traditionally attributed to him, and a fragments of other writers, principally St Augustine. On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, the readings are taken from the bull Transiturus, by which Pope Urban IV (1261-64) originally promulgated the feast; this was read in many medieval Uses, in some places, even after the Tridentine reform. The readings of the third nocturn continue from St Augustine’s Treatises on John. On the Octave day, all nine readings of the feast are simply repeated. This arrangement is typical of all medieval breviaries.

In the Tridentine Breviary, this system is changed, but not entirely. Scriptural readings are assigned to the first nocturn: I Cor. 11, 20-32 on the feast day and the octave, the lectio continua of I Kings on the days between. The readings from St Augustine in the third nocturn are almost exactly the same in the pre- and post-Tridentine breviaries, in response to the reformers’ pretenses that their teachings on grace corresponded to his. (Calvin once declared, even more absurdly than was his wont, “Augustine belongs entirely to us.”) On Wednesday, however, they are taken from St Hilary of Poitiers, and on the octave, from St Cyril of Alexandria.

For the second nocturn, the sermon of St Thomas is split into two parts, the first of which is read on the feast, the second on Friday. The remaining days are dedicated to the Church Fathers, Ss John Chrysostom (Saturday to Monday), Cyprian (Tuesday), Ambrose (Wednesday, part of the De Sacramentis also excerpted by Gratian), and St Cyril of Jerusalem on the octave day.

It is easy to see in this selection a Catholic response to the early Protestants, and their rejection of the traditional doctrine of the Eucharist. Papal bulls or medieval canon law collections would hold no authority with the “reformers” of the age, (Martin Luther burned both at Wittenberg), whether openly Protestant or uncertain Catholics, who were many in that age. The writings of the Fathers, on the other hand, were frequently appealed to as proof that Protestant teachings were in fact those of the primitive Church, and things like Eucharistic processions and Adoration later corruptions of the medieval era. In such a climate, the writings of St Cyril of Jerusalem in particular were a source of profoundest embarrassment to early and later Protestant controversialists.

“The teaching of blessed Paul seems of itself amply sufficient to make certain your faith concerning the Divine Mysteries; and you, having been made worthy thereof, have become, so to speak, of one Body and of one Blood with Christ. For he proclaimed that on the night He was betrayed, our Lord Jesus Christ took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it, and gave it to His disciples, saying: Take, and eat, this is my Body. And taking the cup, and giving thanks, He said: Take this, and drink; this is my Blood. Since therefore He Himself has proclaimed this and said, ‘This is my Body’, who will dare henceforth to doubt that it is so? And since He again has said so insistently ‘This is my Blood’, who would ever doubt, and say that it is not his Blood?

The Last Supper, by Simon Ushakov, 1685

Once, at Cana in Galilee, He turned water into wine, which has a certain similarity to blood; and shall we think him too little worthy of our belief, when He said He would turn wine into Blood? Being called to that marriage, by which two bodies are joined, He did this miracle, which none expected. Shall we not all the more firmly believe that He has given us His Body and Blood, to be our food and drink, and thus receive them with all certainty as His Body and his Blood? For under the appearance of bread He gives us His Body, and under the appearance of wine, His Blood, so that when you shall receive it, you may taste the Body and Blood of Christ, being made a partaker of the same Body and Blood. Thus indeed do we become Christ-bearers, that is, bearing Christ in our bodies, when we receive His Body and Blood into our members; thus, according to the blessed Peter, do we come to share in the divine nature.

…Wherefore I would not have you understand these things, as if they were merely and simply bread, merely and simply wine; for they are the Body and Blood of Christ. For even if your senses deny this fact, yet let faith confirm you in this belief. Judge not the thing by the taste thereof, but let faith assure thee beyond all doubt, that you have been made worthy to partake of the Body and Blood of Christ.” (from the fourth Mystagogical Catechesis)

By including such a passage in a corpus of sermons that begins with a work of St Thomas Aquinas, the Breviary of St Pius V asserts a continuity of doctrine which reaches from St Paul to the Church Fathers, both Eastern and Western, and to the greatest theologian of the medieval, scholastic tradition.

The cathedral of St Andrew in Victoria, British Columbia, will have a solemn High Mass this Saturday for the feast of the Birth of St John the Baptist, starting at 11 a.m., the first such Mass held there since the liturgical reform. The church is located at 740 View Street.

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

Today's CMAA Colloquium Mass, a Votive Mass of St Paul, was celebrated by Father James Richardson at St Mark's Church in St Paul, MN. Some of the Chant and Polyphony Directors are pictured including Jeffrey Morse, David Hughes, William Mahrt and Melanie Malinka.